Early depictions of Greece on display at Benaki Museum

Most people in Greece associate the name Candia with the Cretan wine brand. Fewer know of the 21-year Siege of Candia in the 1600s that resulted in Crete passing from Venetian control into the hands of the Ottomans or that Candia was the name of present-day Iraklio.

Back in 1483, however, the postcard-pretty town of Iraklio had enchanted a German nobleman called Bernhard von Breydenbach. Three years later it appeared in a colored woodcut illustration in a book he published recounting his adventures on a tour of the Holy Land and Greece.

This woodcut is the first known realistic depiction of a Greek location in print and is also the image chosen to advertise the Benaki Museum's latest exhibition, "Travels in Greece (15th-19th century)," which presents to the public for the first time maps, publications, illustrations and travelers' journals pertaining to the Hellenic...